eBooks

An estimated 20 million Americans have thyroid disorders, but more than half don’t know it. Find out why thyroid problems are so often mis-diagnosed, what really causes them, and how to heal them naturally.

Research suggests that healing your gut may be the single most important thing you can do to improve your health. In this eBook, you’ll learn how to optimize your gut health—and by extension, your overall health—with simple diet and lifestyle changes.

What is a low carb diet, really? When can a low carb diet be beneficial? Should everyone follow a low carb diet? Or, can a low carb diet ruin your health? After reading this eBook, you’ll be able to understand the many factors that play into how a person handles a low carbohydrate diet, and whether or not their health will improve on such a plan.

Are common additives to food and supplements like soy lecithin, carrageenan, xanthum gum, and magnesium stearate harmful–or harmless? Read this eBook to find out which ingredients you should be concerned about, and which are safe.

Is sugar “toxic” in any amount—even in natural sweeteners? Are artificial sweeteners safe? What about stevia and xylitol? Cut through the confusion and hype and find out which sweeteners are safe for you and your family.

The Paleo diet has the potential to dramatically improve your health—but the transition doesn’t always go smoothly. In this eBook, you’ll learn the three biggest obstacles to Paleo success, and how to overcome them.

What do memory loss, depression, anxiety, fatigue, nerve pain, and infertility have in common? They can all be caused by B12 deficiency. Find out why B12 deficiency is more common than most doctors think, how to know if you’re deficient, and what to do about it.

Does eating cholesterol and saturated fat really cause heart disease? Are statin drugs as effective as we’re told? Find out what the latest research says in this eBook, and learn how to prevent and treat heart disease naturally.

RHR: Food Allergy Testing, Tricks for Flu Season and Exclusive Book Bonuses

This week we discuss the validity of food allergy testing, Chris’s best tip for stopping colds and flus in their tracks, and how to get exclusive bonuses and free stuff when you pre-order the book. Make sure you check out all the details here!

In this episode, we cover:

2:00 What Chris ate for breakfast3:50 How accurate is food allergy testing?6:40 How Mother’s diet impacts breast milk13:31 The ideal ratio of Vitamin A and D17:32 A ginger trick for cold and flu season20:00 Book Bundle Update: How to get exclusive bonuses with your order

Full Text Transcript:

Steve Wright: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Revolution Health Radio Show. This show is brought to you by ChrisKresser.com. I’m your host, Steve Wright from SCDlifestyle.com, and with me is integrative medical practitioner and healthy skeptic Chris Kresser. Chris, how are you doing right now?

Chris Kresser: I’m in the thick of it, Steve. It’s a really exciting but really busy time with the book launch coming up and the launch party planning. I actually just noticed that the launch party dinner sold out, which is fantastic.

Steve Wright: Woohoo!

Chris Kresser: 125 seats. It’s a huge venue.

Steve Wright: Awesome.

Chris Kresser: 125 seats for dinner. We still have a few tickets left for the signing, which is separate, but I’m sure by the time this airs, those will be gone, too. So, I’m looking forward to celebrating with everybody for that.

Steve Wright: You’re hustling, man. It’s good, I think.

Chris Kresser: Oh, it’s a good time. I really like to meet people that I’ve had an Internet relationship with, whether they’re just reading my articles or listening to podcasts or they’re my patients. I have, of course, a lot of local patients I already know, seeing them in the clinic, but I know some people are traveling in for this party. Robb Wolf is coming and Michelle Tam and Melissa Joulwan and Diana Rodgers, and I think Stacy Toth is coming out from the East Coast, so there’ll be a lot of colleagues of mine there, which will be fun, and then lots of new people I haven’t met, so I’m looking forward to it.

What Chris ate for breakfast

Steve Wright: Yeah, that’s going to be awesome, man. I’m excited for you. So, in the midst of all of this that’s swirling around you as you’re holding down the fort, what are you eating for breakfast that’s keeping you healthy?

Chris Kresser: Let’s see if I can even remember what I had for breakfast. It seems like ages ago. It’s been such a busy day. I had a pretty simple breakfast today. I had a couple of poached eggs and some bacon and some sauerkraut and some leftover steamed kale that I sautéed in a little bit of ghee. And that was it.

Steve Wright: Awesome.

Chris Kresser: What about you, Steve?

Steve Wright: Well, I just fasted. Yeah, when I get super-busy – I’m kind of busy as well – I end up fasting a lot more.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, I often do too, but today I had a feeling I needed some energy-dense food to get me through the day. And I haven’t eaten again since then, so it turned out to be a good decision.

Steve Wright: Oh, nice. OK.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, who knows when the fasting will strike?

Steve Wright: Well, you know, I think I’ve seen conversely that as I enter into a stressful period I’ll start fasting, but as I’ve been in that stressful period for two to three weeks I begin to eat breakfast on a regular basis, actually.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, because you need it.

Steve Wright: Yep. So, we are going to do a Q&A episode today. Is that correct?

Chris Kresser: Yeah, we are. We’re going to do some questions. Unfortunately my time is a little bit limited. I know I had mentioned a few episodes back that we may not be able to do the full schedule of the show, and this is going to be one of those days where I have to cut it short a little bit. But let’s do some questions, and I want to talk a little bit about the book bundle campaign, which just launched. It’s pretty exciting. I want to make sure everyone knows about it and understands what’s happening.

How accurate is food allergy testing?

Steve Wright: All right, perfect. Well, let’s hop into the questions then. This first one comes from Tony. “Chris, I recently took a food allergy test from Life Extension that was troubling. It showed that I’m highly reactive to a number of foods I’ve eaten for years without any noticeable reactions. These include eggs, cheese, most grains – which I now avoid anyway – and walnuts. My question is twofold: How accurate are the results of these types of tests? And two, should I avoid those foods that the test showed that I have a strong reaction to?”

Chris Kresser: That’s a great question, and I’m continuously reevaluating that question because there are all these new tests becoming available and new options for clinicians, but each time I look at the research I’m continually disappointed by the lack of evidence supporting any of the food allergy testing. I think Cyrex Labs probably has the best available food allergy testing that’s out there, but they’re only really looking at cross-reactive proteins that are related to gluten intolerance, and even then, I’m still not 100% sold that it’s accurate. I think food allergy testing, though, can be used as a springboard or as a basis for experimentation, a jumping-off point, if you will. What that means is you do a food allergy test, you get it back, and it says you’re allergic to strawberries, celery, and egg whites. Rather than just take that at face value and completely eliminate those foods from your diet forever, you could try a period of a couple weeks or three weeks where you don’t eat that those foods at all and then add them back in and see if they are a problem for you. If you look at the research, the elimination/provocation protocol, which I just mentioned – you know, taking foods out of your diet and adding them back in – is still the gold standard for food allergy testing. And if you go to a top-flight food allergist, that’s what they’ll do. They may use some of the testing in the way that I described as a way of figuring out how to structure the elimination diet, but really I think you still have to do that kind of testing and there’s no reason to avoid a healthy food like celery or strawberries just on the basis of these test results without doing your own personal testing.

So, that was the first question. What was the second one again?

Steve Wright: You basically answered it. He wanted to know if he should avoid the foods that he reacted strongly to.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s what I thought. OK, so if you think they might be a problem, avoid them for a little while and add them back in, but don’t ever rely only on the results of the food allergy testing without testing it yourself.

Steve Wright: Yeah, it seems – at least from the chatter that I hear from clients – that these tests can be very helpful if you’re, like, brand new to this idea that diet might actually really impact your health or if you’re someone who is at their wits’ end and just don’t understand the variables of diet. But like you said, you end up doing the same test over and over again, which is you have to remove them and add them back in.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, exactly.

How Mother’s diet impacts breast milk

Steve Wright: Fascinating. OK. Let’s roll on, Chris. This question comes from Anonymous. “Hi, Chris! I was hoping you could help me with something that I believe is important and perplexing to most mothers: the relationship between food that we eat and the quality of our breast milk. Try as I may, I cannot get a standard answer on whether or not what I eat affects my baby through my breast milk. My instincts say that it absolutely does, but my medical supports say that my body knows what to pass to the baby and what to eliminate. The reason I am asking is because I have two daughters who are both having skin challenges from very dry patches to rashes to odd brown patches. Our MD gives us either a steroid cream or a yeast cream and often tells us that both of them should be used at the same time or that one of them could fix it. Could I be passing along something through my breast milk?”

Chris Kresser: It’s crazy to me that in the year 2013 doctors are still saying there’s no relationship between what a mother eats and the breast milk. I mean, that’s absolutely ridiculous. There’s so much evidence that proves that wrong. As a simple example, vitamin D intake of a woman is very closely correlated with vitamin D status in the lactating baby, and the same is true for nutrients like DHA, and that wouldn’t be the case if there wasn’t some transfer of nutrients going on through the breast milk. I’m sure many, many mothers would tell you, patients of mine, women that I’ve interacted with who have purchased The Healthy Baby Code, women on the forum, all kinds of women can attest that what they eat absolutely does affect their baby and cause reactions. There are lots of women who can’t eat garlic and onions without causing digestive distress in their baby. There are women who can’t eat citrus because their baby is sensitive to that. There are women who are gluten intolerant and their babies are somewhat gluten intolerant and there’s a reaction there. There’s still a lot we don’t understand about it, but I think it’s absolutely crystal clear that a woman’s nutrition can affect the quality of the breast milk and can cause reactions in the child if the child is susceptible.

Having said that, not all reactions that a nursing kid is having are related to the mother’s diet. This is where it gets a little bit confusing because there’s no way to know for sure if the reaction that the child is having is related to the mother’s diet without doing a lot of experimentation and trial and error to try to figure it out. In some cases, the reaction might be more related to the child’s gut flora or the immune status of the child. So, for example, if the baby was born via C-section or if the mom took antibiotics during pregnancy or if the mom had a history of antibiotic use or just gut flora that is dysregulated for any number of reasons, which unfortunately is true for a lot of women and men as adults, then that can get transmitted to the child. The child will start off with gut flora that’s not optimal. And this is sad. It’s nobody’s fault because, of course, we as adults often didn’t make the choices that led to poor gut flora, or if we did, we weren’t aware of it, and our parents often were just trying to help, giving us antibiotics when we were sick and doctors thought that was a good idea. But it is a sad reality of modern life, that the baby’s first exposure to the microbiome is their mother’s microbiome in the birth canal or in the hospital if they’re born via C-section. So, the establishment of the microbiome in the baby begins at birth, and depending on the status of the mother’s microbiome or how they’re born, either vaginally or C-section, that will determine their gut flora and thus their immune status because most of the immune system is in the gut.

With skin-related stuff in babies – and adults, for that matter – I tend to focus on the gut-skin connection. You could continue to experiment with removing foods from your diet as the mother, but you could also do things like try Ther-Biotic Infant, which is a special infant probiotic from Klaire Labs, which is good to use with kids up until 2 years old, or for a toddler who is over 2 years old, something like Prescript-Assist. You could add some more bone broth to their diet. You could add some soluble fibers, and fermentable fibers are really what we’re talking about because probiotics definitely help with immune regulation and they help create a hospitable environment in the gut for a health microbiome, but in terms of actually increasing the quantity of beneficial bacteria, fermentable fibers are best for that. These would be like all kinds of different starchy plants, fruits and vegetables with soluble fiber, and then you could even do small amounts of resistant starch, which seems to have a really big impact on the gut flora. Maybe like a quarter of a teaspoon of Bob’s Red Mill potato starch, which is gluten-free, and that’s pretty high in resistant starch, and that can really help increase the amount of bifidobacteria in the colon, and low levels of bifidobacteria have been associated with eczema and all kinds of different skin conditions.

And then in many cases, kids will often grow out of eczema and patchy skin type of stuff. This doesn’t always happen, but I’ve had some patients with kids who have little bits of that and mom is doing everything possible and the kids still have it, and then after a while it just disappears and nobody ever figured out why it was happening, but it went away and stayed away. So, that can happen, too. It’s a pretty tumultuous time. There’s a lot of growth happening, a lot of changes happening, and sometimes it can lead to symptoms like that which don’t necessarily stick around.

Steve Wright: Awesome. I think that gives her a lot of different action items and a lot of things to start testing.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

The ideal ratio of Vitamin A and D

Steve Wright: Cool. Let’s move on to the next question. This question, Chris, comes from Mary. She would like to know: “Could you please comment on the importance of vitamin A and vitamin D as far as the ratio? Is this ratio also problematic in cod liver oil? And what are your thoughts on krill oil as an alternative to cod liver oil?”

Chris Kresser: The idea behind this ratio of A to D is that some people, like the Vitamin D Council, have spoken out and said that vitamin A is toxic and we should avoid supplementing with it, so the idea is that you shouldn’t have too much more vitamin A than vitamin D. There is some truth to that, but it tends to be overblown as a concern. The reality is that vitamin A only contributes to osteoporosis or problems when vitamin D levels are deficient or when the ratio of A to D is massively out of balance. Chris Masterjohn is really the authority on this topic. He has covered it in a lot of detail. For example, in one article he wrote, he listed some animal studies that showed that the optimal A-to-D ratio is somewhere between 4 to 8, and he mentioned Dr. Linday’s studies from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York showing that cod liver oil prevents upper respiratory tract infections when supplied to her patients. The cod liver oil she was using had a ratio of 5 to 8.

Steve Wright: That ratio is vitamin A to vitamin D?

Chris Kresser: Yeah, so 5 to 8 times the amount of vitamin A to then vitamin D, or 4 to 8 times, and that’s the similar ratio to fermented cod liver oil from Green Pasture, which I recommend. And then Chris points to rat studies showing that vitamin A is toxic and antagonizes the effects of vitamin D at ratios of 5000 to 50,000, so we’re talking about ratios that are 1000 times higher to 10,000 times higher than what is seen in cod liver oil. So, we’re not even in the same ballpark here, and I really don’t think it’s a concern when you’re talking about a whole food like cod liver oil.

Steve Wright: Interesting. Does vitamin K2 play into that at all?

Chris Kresser: Yeah, vitamin K2 works synergistically with A and D, and K2 prevents the toxic effects of both A and D. So, making sure you’re getting enough K2 would be a good idea as well.

Steve Wright: All right. And then do you have any thoughts on this idea of krill oil versus cod liver oil?

Chris Kresser: I think cod liver oil is far superior because it doesn’t only include EPA and DHA, which are also in the krill oil. It includes vitamin A and D and K2 and some quinones, vitamin E. Actually I tend to think of cod liver oil as more of a fat-soluble vitamin supplement first and second provides some good EPA and DHA, whereas most fish oils, including krill, are only the EPA and DHA, so you’re not getting any of the beneficial fat-soluble vitamins, other than vitamin D perhaps, depending on the fish oil. Like, wild salmon oil has some vitamin D, but it’s vitamin A in its preformed retinol in the active form that is so lacking in the American diet, especially if you’re not eating liver, and that’s what cod liver oil provides in abundance.

Steve Wright: Perfect. Everybody, take your cod liver oil.

Chris Kresser: Or eat your liver. If you’re eating organ meats and you’re eating a lot of fish, you may not need to take cod liver oil, per se, but if you’re not eating those organ meats, cod liver oil is kind of a one-stop shop.

Steve Wright: And as we roll into cold and flu season here, studies and Chris Masterjohn’s work show that if you double up on those dosages, you can help yourself through that season.

A ginger trick for cold and flu season

Chris Kresser: Yeah, it really helps. And you just reminded me, there’s another little trick. I think I’ve talked about this before, but the best thing you can do if you’re coming down with a cold – and since we’re in that season now, it’s worth sharing – is if you don’t have a juicer, get one. If you have one, you can use it. You get a bunch of ginger, like, a lot, a couple pounds, 2 to 3 pounds of ginger, and you put it in the juicer so you’re making fresh ginger juice. And then you put 3 to 4 tablespoons of ginger in a cup with the juice of one lemon and some honey, like a couple of teaspoons or a tablespoon of honey, and you sip on that all day. You’ll probably need to make it a couple more times throughout the day, but you just keep sipping it throughout the whole day. It’s really intense, that much fresh ginger juice. You’ll really understand when people say that ginger is spicy when you drink that! You sprinkle a tiny bit of cayenne pepper, like a pinch of it, too. That really helps a lot. The fresh ginger is antiviral, and it actually prevents the adhesion of the virus to the upper respiratory mucosa. If you do it right at the beginning of getting sick, it can really prevent you from getting sick at all. We do this around my house, and I’ve shared it with a lot of patients. It’s extremely effective, and if you have the tools on hand and you have ginger around and you can do it early enough, it can really, really help protect you.

Steve Wright: So, is that literally like 1 to 2 pounds per day of ginger?

Chris Kresser: No, we juiced a pound or a little over a pound the other day. We felt like we might be coming down with something, and it lasted for two people, both my wife and me, for a day and a half, I think.

Steve Wright: OK.

Chris Kresser: It depends how strong you make it and how much you drink, of course, but you do need a lot of it.

Steve Wright: OK, and so this is maybe a 3-to-5-day type of idea?

Chris Kresser: Yeah, as long as necessary, but oftentimes if you just do it for one day, if you feel like you’re coming down with it and you do this for one day, then the next day you’ll feel better.

Steve Wright: Nice. I’m going to have to give this a try. Sounds cool.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Steve Wright: OK, Chris, well, I hear you have a book coming out. Is that true?

Book Bundle Update: How to get exclusive bonuses with your order

Chris Kresser: Yeah, I have a book coming out. Its publication date is coming up fast, actually, December 31, New Year’s Eve day, so I’m pretty excited about that. I did want to tell everyone about this bundle campaign that we just launched. I’m pretty excited about it, and here’s how it works in a nutshell. Basically you would pre-order one or more books and then I would give you some really valuable programs and products that I’ve worked hard to create over the last couple of years. The goal of the bundle campaign is really to generate as many pre-orders as possible, and the reason that matters is that my goal is to debut at number one on the New York Time bestseller list. It’s a lofty goal, but I think it’s possible, and the reason that that’s my goal is that the higher the position the book reaches on the list, the more people will see it and learn about it and read it. And the more people that read it, the more lives we can transform, and as I’ve said many times, my mission and purpose on this planet is to help as many people transform their lives so that they can live the life that they want to live. There is something called the halo effect where the position of the book on the bestseller list the first week really does a lot to determine its ongoing success. So, if it debuts and has a really high spot on the New York Times list the first week, then chances are it will maintain a good position on the list and generate more media opportunities and more attention and more people talking about it and reading it. So, that’s my goal. I’ve worked really hard on the book. I think it came out really well. I believe in its power to transform and even save lives, and I want to spread the message of the power of personalizing paleo as far and wide as I can.

So, this bundle campaign, the idea is to really incentivize you to pre-order the book. If you’re considering buying the book at any point, there’s really no downside to pre-ordering it. You pay the same amount that you’re going to pay if you buy it after it’s already out, but the difference is if you pre-order it now, I’m going to give you tons of free stuff that you won’t be able to get if you buy it after the publication date.

We have bundles for individuals. There’s actually a one-book bundle, which sounds a little strange because it’s not actually a bundle, but we’re even offering free stuff for people who buy one book. In fact, for the one-book bundle – and all the bundles – we’re offering this really cool new product that I developed called the Personal Paleo Compass, and this is an online assessment tool where you fill out a health questionnaire with questions about all different aspects of health, and then it spits back a customized report. It’ll tell you how you’re doing in 10 different areas of wellness. It tells you the top areas in my book that you should really be paying attention to based on your responses to the quiz, and it generates specific dietary, lifestyle, and lab test recommendations for improving your health in your weaker areas based on your responses to the assessment. And then it tells you very specifically which chapters and sections of the book to focus on and which bonus chapters on the website that you should focus on. So, it’s really a powerful tool, and it’s going to help you get a lot more out of the book once you have the book. I give you that for ordering one book, and then along with that you get an audio recording that I’m going to do shortly here and a transcript of that recording on the Top 5 Paleo Pitfalls and how to address them, so these are the five biggest challenges that I see people face with paleo and what to do about them. So, that’s what you get for pre-ordering one book, and as I said, it’s no more expensive. You buy the book wherever you would buy it otherwise, you know, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon, your local bookstore or whatever, and then you just send us the receipt and we give you that free stuff in the first week of January when the bundle campaign is finished.

Then we have 3 and 10-book bundles, and as you go up and you buy more books, you get more stuff. With the 10-book bundle, you’re getting the Personal Paleo Compass and the Top 5 Paleo Pitfalls, but you’re also getting free access to the Personal Paleo Launchpad. I have a product called the Personal Paleo Launchpad now, but this is completely different. It’s been completely revamped and redone, and it’s going to be like the advanced online companion for the book. So, for people who want some handholding and support and a lot more resources and in-depth cheat sheets, worksheets, action steps, etc., related to implementing the three-step approach that I talk about in the book, that’s what this new online program will be. It’ll be a 12-week advanced course. And then you’ll get a year’s worth of access to the Paleo Recipe Generator, which is this online paleo recipe database that generates completely customized meal plans based on your specific needs and preferences. And you’re going to get free access to the first in a new series of webinars that I’m going to be doing called the Health Mastery Series, and this one is going to be on mastering your gut health. So, we’ll talk all about how to properly diagnose gut conditions and dietary supplements, lifestyle tweaks, lab testing, everything. It’ll basically be me sharing how I address digestive conditions in my practice with my patients but kind of more like a group-practice, group-treatment model. So, that’s $600 worth of stuff for ordering 10 books. You buy the book on Amazon and it’s $17, so you spend $170 and you get $600 worth of stuff in return.

And then we have some bundles that are more oriented towards gyms and clinics and healthcare practitioners. I know I have a lot of those in my community, and so we wanted to make some bundles that really address their needs. So, we have a 100-book bundle, a 250-book bundle, and a 500-book bundle. The purpose here is a gym or a clinic can buy one of these bundles and we include stuff that will help the gym to attract new clients, to retain the clients that they already have, to generate some revenue from the bundle itself, and to really just distinguish themselves in their local community.

I think the easiest way to give you an idea of how this can work is to show you how one gym that’s already committed to the largest bundle, the 500-book bundle, is planning to use it to generate at least $25,000 in income. They bought the 500-book bundle, and that bundle comes with a full-day workshop with me and Robb Wolf, so Robb and I will travel to your location and do a one-day workshop as part of this bundle. So, they’re going to be selling tickets to that event for $150, and that will include the cost of a book as well as a Paleologix Total Transformation license – that’s another part of the bundle I’ll come back to in a second – at a 50% discount, and they’re estimating they’ll easily be able to sell 100 tickets, so that’s $15,000 for one event, which is more than they would have spent on the bundle, significantly more. They’ll actually be making money. And then they’ll still have another 400 licenses for the Paleologix Total Transformation Program. This is a program that Robb and I put together that is kind of a one-stop shop for people who are doing a 30-day challenge. It helps them to be successful with the 30-day challenge. They get all kinds of cheat sheets and handouts and resources to increase the chances that they’ll be successful with it. And so, the gyms can sell these licenses as part of their existing nutrition programs or they can start a 30-day challenge and include a license in the challenge or they can sell a package that includes one of my books and one of these licenses. In that bundle we’re actually offering 500 of those licenses and they’re worth $47, almost 50 bucks, each, so that’s $12,500 worth of potential revenue there. So, for buying this bundle, this gym is going to end up making their money back and probably doubling or tripling what they spend on the bundle in addition to really helping a lot of people transform their lives. It’s a great opportunity. There’s only a few of those bundles available because Robb and I are busy, of course, and we’re only going to be doing four of those bigger bundles, and already a couple of them, I think, are spoken for.

And then the 250-book bundle includes a half-day event at your gym with me, so I would fly out and do a half-day talk and a book signing at your gym. There are only four of those available, and we’ve had some strong interest on a couple already. And then there’s a 100-book bundle that doesn’t include Robb or me speaking at your gym but does include some other really cool stuff. There are a few more of those available, but if you’re interested, I would definitely recommend checking it out as soon as possible because they’re going pretty fast, and I don’t think the bigger bundles will be around for much longer. It’s PersonalPaleoCode.com/Bundles, where you can learn more about it, and then if you’re a gym or a clinic interested in one of the bigger bundles, there’s a button you click to learn more and you fill out a form and one of my representatives will get back to you and talk to you more about it.

For the smaller bundles, just go to the website and look at the instructions. It’s pretty simple. You just order 1 or 3 or 10 copies of the book from your preferred merchant, local bookstore or online retailer, and then you fill out a form and you send your receipts to an email address, and then we send you the stuff in the first week of January once it’s all ready and once the book launches and the bundle campaign ends. So again, there’s no downside to doing it. You pay the same amount and you get lots of free stuff, up to $600 worth of free stuff if you get the 10-book bundle. And you’ll be supporting a good cause, which is helping my book get to number one on the New York Times list and helping to spread this message of health and wellness.

Steve Wright: You know, Chris, there’s a New York Times bestseller and he now runs a multimillion-dollar company. I think he said this. I won’t say his name because I don’t want to misattribute it, but it was one of the most profound things I ever heard when it came to books, and it was essentially that an author can spend somewhere between 2 and 20 years of their life dedicated towards dumping everything that’s in their brain and their experiences down into 200, 400, 500 pieces of information, these pages in a book, and the idea that you might scoff at paying around $20 – I think that’s probably the average price, and your book’s a little cheaper than that – to get one person’s dedication to this one subject, when the reality is that the info that’s contained in these types of books has so many breakthroughs for people and their health and that that one idea is worth several times that amount of money. I think everybody, if you’re looking for that last little stocking stuffer, now’s the perfect time to pick up Chris’ book.

Chris Kresser: I’m glad you mentioned that, Steve, because my book, as everyone knows, is not going to be available for Christmas, which is unfortunate because it would make a great Christmas gift, but in the next few days – and maybe already by the time this podcast airs – we’re going to have a really cool gift card that my designer made up that you can print out that says: I bought you a copy of this book, Your Personal Paleo Code (The Paleo Cure in paperback). It’s really beautifully designed, and then you can buy one of these bundles. Let’s say you buy a 10-book bundle. You can just print out 10 of these gift cards and you fold it up, put it in an envelope, and give these out as Christmas gifts. It’s something that you can actually put in people’s hands even though it’s not the book itself, and then when the bundle arrives, of course, you can give them the book a week later. We want to make it easy for you to give it as a gift because I think it can make a really great Christmas gift.

Steve Wright: Yeah, and I can vouch for it because I got an advanced copy, and we’ll have a review up on our site here pretty soon, but it’s a great book. I think it’s an amazing resource for those who have been on paleo and for those who might want to pull some inception and maybe slide it into somebody’s life and see what happens.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, and it’s really interesting what you said. I mean, the book took a year to write, but it really was a 15-year project in terms of the life experience, clinical experience with patients, the years and years of research that I’ve done, and all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into that this last year of working on the book would never have been possible without that previous 10 or 15 years. I’ve been really caught up in all of the work involved in getting the book out and stuff, but I do have moments where I think: Wow, this is probably the accomplishment that I’m most proud of to date other than the birth of Sylvie! It’s a pretty monumental amount of work, and I’m really excited to share it with the world, and I want it to do as well as it can possibly do, so I’m grateful for your support, and if you could get out there and buy one of these bundles and pre-order the book, I’d really appreciate it.

Almost forgot to mention, if you’ve already pre-ordered a book, you automatically qualify for the 1-book bundle benefit. All you’d have to do in that case is go to personalpaleocode.com/bundles, click on the 1-book bundle and fill out the form and send us your receipt and we’ll make sure you get those great benefits.

Steve Wright: Well, on behalf of all the listeners, Chris, congratulations. This is a huge process, and I know that you put just, as you said, so much blood, sweat, and tears into it, so congrats.

Chris Kresser: Thank you, Steve. And thanks, everyone. This is the last show probably for a few weeks. I’m going to be taking some time off after Christmas, off the grid, taking it easy. I hope you guys all get some rest as well. And then the book tour starts. The launch party is on January 4, and the book tour starts the day after that. I’ll be in Santa Cruz on the 5th and flying to New York on the 6th. So, we will do our best to keep coming to you during January while I’m on the road, but the shows are probably going to be shorter than normal and maybe not on the regular time schedule, so bear with us and hopefully we’ll be back to the normal schedule in February.

Steve Wright: Yeah, we wish all of the listeners out there happy holidays, happy New Year, and we’ll talk to you in 2014!

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More people are sensitive, rather than allergic, to a food. If you are sensitive to a food, your body may not react for several hours or even the next day. Food sensitivity symptoms are deceptive because you would not normally associate them with foods you have eaten. Headaches, chronic sinus congestion, aching muscles and joints or feeling drained of energy are all symptoms of food sensitivity reactions. Food sensitivities may even cause mood swings or affect your mental clarity. Irritability and a short temper may also be the result of food sensitivities. They are often related to food addictions and can be a cause of weight problems for a reason you wouldn’t suspect. Discover the link between what you eat and how you feel by watching our short animation here: http://www.immunolabs.com

I’ve had this post saved in my favorites since I heard the podcast, specifically for the ginger juice recipe. I had reason to make it this week, after being around my brother who has an upper respiratory tract infection, possibly bronchitis. I woke up with a slight sore throat the next morning and knew that I had to take action quickly. The ginger juice tonic is definitely strong, but it was very warming and soothing, and the more I drank it, the more I liked it and the better I felt. By the next morning, I had a bit of a tickle in my lungs, and I knew that it would’ve moved down into my chest w/out the ginger remedy. I continued drinking it that second day and ended up never getting sick. I made a batch for my brother, even though it was obviously too late to prevent his getting sick, and he said that he stopped coughing after the first sip. All hail the ginger tonic!

I’m sure you no longer need this response, but for anyone else who might – I juiced it w/the peel on. With as much ginger as I was juicing, peeling it would’ve been way too time consuming. I gave it a good scrub under running water with a veggie brush first though.

Happy New Year, Chris! Any recommendations for allergy testing in a 2.5 yr old? Do you still recommend Cyrex Labs or a skin test? I ask as my daughter had a reaction to something about 9 months ago. We think it was caused from eating a peanut; but we’re not certain. Thank you!!

Probably I’m replying too late to be of use to the original poster but for posterity in case another poster didn’t comment: “allergies” are IgE-mediated reactions which result in usually obvious symptoms shortly after exposure, i.e., within minutes. Symptoms could be hives, wheezing, belly pain or anaphylaxis. Allergies are primarily evaluated using skin prick tests (which basically look for a hive at site of prick) or looking at IgE antibodies in serum. Food “sensitivities” can be IgG-mediated or cell-mediated without antibody production so they are hard to test for, thus the elimination/provocation diet Chris advocates. Cyrex is a great test to look for IgG (and IgA) antibodies to various subunits of gluten, to foods that are cross-reactive with gluten, to foods that people avoiding gluten may eat a lot of (millet, amaranth) and autoantibodies associated with gluten sensitivity. Autoantibodies are made against our own tissues when the reaction to gluten gets confused as in Celiac Dx and Type 1 diabetes. I do recommend the Cyrex test but since there is data to suggest that about 50% of people with clinical gluten sensitivity do not have antibodies (Volta, et al?), I always recommend elimination and reintroduction.

However, with regard to IgG food “allergy” testing, you once called it bunk (if I recall correctly). So why not just tell people the truth here..it is bunk…GARBAGE! I hope you’re aware that these tests simply pick up antigen exposure. NOTHING at all do with any type of reactivity!! Try eating almonds daily for a month..then do the test. Surprise!..Gee..all of a sudden, I’m allergic to almonds!!

I’m a Nutritionist (MS, RD, LD) with 30 years of experience in integrative medicine. I’ve performed many double-blinded, placebo-controlled ingestion challenges – the Gold Standard. Unfortunately, I’ve worked with docs who order these tests just to pad their pocketbooks. One doc even called the results “stupid things” (knowing the test is bogus), but she orders them anyway to make money. Even though she tells this to a patient, the patient will still fear the food. Bogus, Bogus Bogus!!

These tests are a total RIPOFF! What don’t you call a spade a spade, Chris? What’s holding you back?

Neat garlic trick. Should have read the comments earlier, as I have come down with a cold yesterday, but couldn’t buy ginger on Xmas day. Hopefully it’s not too late for the ginger trick , as my cold hasn’t progressed past the sore throat.

I don’t have a juicer so I improvised. I peeled and grated the ginger with a food processor and then pressed out the juice using a potato ricer. I got about a 1/4 quart of juice from one big root.

Have you looked into MRT (mediator release testing) for food sensitivities? I use it as a dietitian, and from my training, it is the most accurate one that tests for mediators like histamine vs IgG. It is the most sensitive when they do split sample testing compared to other labs. It’s also tested in a few clinical trials and marketed for primarily IBS, migraines, & fibromyalgia, especially refractory patients where other treatments or diet/lifestyle modifications didn’t work. Just wondering if you had looked into it or had any thoughts.

How can you supplement an infant effectively who is not breastfeeding? I believe it is about 900 species of beneficial micro-organism a baby receives from its mother’s breast milk.. Natren’s Life Start with Bifidobacterium infantis is currently being added on a daily basis.. Are there any other advices for building up the gut of an infant?

I like the ginger idea but it seems time consuming. Here’s what I’ve been doing for the past 2 years and it’s worked every time. My kids even do it.

As soon as you feel a cold coming on (stuffiness, pressure in your sinuses, a tickle in your throat), crush one garlic clove with a fork or garlic crusher. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes, then swallow it (don’t chew it!) You can take it in small pieces if you need to.

For our kids, we use about a 1/8 of a tsp of fresh-crushed garlic and put a little raw honey over it to make it palatable. They swallow it with some water with no problem.

It’s funny because I’ve told a lot of people about this and most of the time the reaction I get is “ew, that’s gross” and they never try it. I guess some people would rather suffer for a week with a cold than a minute swallowing garlic. Seems like a no brainer to me.

However, for all those who have given it a try, they now live by the rule and are believers!

Save yourself the disgust of taking a spoonful of minced garlic from the jar! Crushing your own garlic clove is not even close to being that bad.

I have a question for you. I noticed when I take fermented cod liver oil, my allergies go through the roof. Sneezing, itchy eyes / throat, runny nose. It’s gross, really. I’m guessing it’s high histamine content? I’ve noticed that I can drink my daily kombucha without problems, but when I add in kimchi or sauerkraut, I start sneezing more.

All that to say, do you have a viable substitute for fermented cod liver oil? Or do you think a fresh bottle would have a lower histamine content?

Sherri- it’s most likely the fermentation that’s bothering you. People with high histamine often need to avoid fermented foods. This is why the Low Histamine diet excludes fermented foods. Try using a reputable cod liver oil that is unfermented and see if that makes a difference. You could also switch to the Vital Choice wild salmon oil that Chris recommends.

Is the book available in the UK or Aus on the 31st? I can only see the audio version on amazon.co.uk. If so, do the smaller bundles apply to overseas purchases? I’m in Bali on NYE, but can’t wait for the book!

The study showed that fresh, but not dried, ginger is effective against HRSV-induced plaque formation on airway epithelium by blocking viral attachment and internalization. N.B. HRSV is not influenza virushttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23123794